Momentum

Here’s the thing about momentum: it’s often easy to maintain, but tough to build, and even tougher to rekindle once lost. And life doesn’t give a crap about your momentum. It hurls all manner of obstacles at us, and sometimes it feels like a big game- a test to see if we have what it takes to keep going.

For the first half of summer, I mostly didn’t feel like I had it- whatever it takes to keep going. There was little momentum, and all parts of my life were impacted. It was as if I’d forgotten why any of it mattered. Of course I could rationalize the why, but I wasn’t feeling it. The internal fire of it was still there, but only smoldering; so tiny, barely visible.

Then, vacation week. Every July, my family (Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister-In-Law, their two girls, my two boys, and sometimes a girlfriend of the latter) rents a house on a lake in northern Minnesota for a long weekend. My mom does the heavy lifting of researching and finding a vacation rental that meets our collective needs. Then we count down the days to one of our favorite weeks of the year.

Actual fire from this year’s Vacation Week (thank you, Sheila)

Vacation week isn’t an entire week; it’s more of a long weekend. Typically we arrive late on Wednesday and stay through Sunday afternoon. This means we have to rent through Monday. We can’t actually stay until Monday morning checkout because the four grandchildren are all hockey players. The oldest has graduated to beer league, as all eventually do, but the younger three skate most weekdays in the summer because that’s just how it is here. Hockey is a big freaking deal.

In fact, hockey is so all-consuming that we usually only have about a twenty-four-hour window in which to celebrate Christmas together. The same is true for Thanksgiving and Easter- always rushed. Which is why vacation week is so important to all of us. We’ve started doing our annual Easter egg hunt during vacation week, and this year Mom made her delicious Easter dinner because we couldn’t all be together this past spring. Vacation week is the only few days out of the year that we can all be together without feeling distracted or hurried.

I don’t know what it was about last week with my family that righted me, other than just being with them. Maybe because the book I’m currently writing is for them. It’s for me, too, of course, but it’s equally a love letter to the people who have me no matter what. No matter how ridiculous, how annoying- I don’t even know because it’s impossible for me to comprehend how I come off to them. The only thing I know is how it feels to be loved by them, which is everything.

Ok. I know one other thing for sure. The world needs our creativity. Whether that looks like creative problem-solving or making something. The world needs it, and we deprive everyone when we hold our creativity in. Whatever we feel compelled to make, we’re morally bound to make it. Do you hear me? That means the world needs you. And if it needs your creativity, then it needs mine, too.

A gift from another writer

I was reminded of this when one of my nieces asked me how my book is coming. The truth? It wasn’t coming. Have I been working on it? Yes. Has it been flowing? Absolutely not. But now it is. Because between her asking me that question, four days with some of my favorite people, and coming home to remember why I bother with any of the things that fill my days, momentum is building once again. It’s an actual fire now, and it’s burning, way down deep. Find your fuel, get out of the way, and let the momentum take you where it must.

Be well :)